This invention relates to the electronics circuitry field. More particularly, this invention is for the enhancement of audio bass in an electronic device.
Portable electronic devices, such as portable personal computers, have decreased dramatically in size in the last few years. Early portable computers weighed over twenty pounds and more realistically resembled a desktop computer with a handle--requiring a reasonable amount of strength to carry them. In contrast, today's laptop and sub-notebook computers can weigh less than three pounds, can easily fit in a briefcase and are truly portable. While the decrease in size of portable personal computers has been a boon to business travelers, it has not been without its problems.
One such problem is that as a computer or other electronic device gets smaller, many of the components contained in the computer or other electronic device must also get smaller. Examples of components that have shrunk along with the device is the circuitry, the hard disk storage, and the speaker. The reduction in the size of the circuitry and the hard disk storage has not been much of a problem, since technological advancements in these areas has allowed equal or better functionality to be present in smaller sizes than what was previously available in the larger sizes.
The reduction in the size of the speaker, on the other hand, has caused more severe problems. As the speaker gets smaller, the maximum power the speaker can handle also gets smaller, thereby reducing the quality of the sound the speaker can produce. In addition, the low frequency response of small speakers must be traded off against the maximum power the speaker can handle because of the physical movement of the speaker's coil at low frequencies. The low power and poor low frequency response of small speakers is wholly unacceptable in today's portable computers and other electronic devices where sound is important, such as when running today's sound intensive multimedia applications.
Although improvements have been made to the speaker quality in portable computers, the low frequencies required to give the user a full audio spectrum is not achievable with the speaker size limitations imposed by the limited space available for components in portable computers.